2nd in Command at FBI Did NOT Disclose his Clinton Connection

A recently executed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request has uncovered some very disturbing information about the second most powerful employee of the FBI.

Fox News is reporting that a FOIA request has found that FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe did not disclose his family’s donations to Hillary Clinton, or his wife’s salary as a Doctor, or the thousands of dollars she collected as a candidate for public office in the commonwealth of Virginia. In 2015 Dr. Jill McCabe ran for the office of state Senator at the behest of Virginia Governor and close Clinton confidante Terry McAuliffe, a campaign that saw her collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations, that her husband failed to declare.

When Fox News asked the FBI how it was possible that McCabe’s paperwork could omit such important information as the fact that his family had brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars or that they had then donated thousands to the Democrat candidate for President, and someone who was being actively investigated by the FBI, the explanation was less than compelling.

An FBI spokesman said the forms were certified as “in compliance with applicable laws and regulations.” The spokesman added Office of Government Ethics (OGE) regulations do not stipulate that a spouse’s salary or contributions received by a spouse’s political campaign must be declared.

Meredith McGehee, chief of policy for government watchdog Issue One, argued that this was a perfect example of the major flaws in the OGE’s policies. “The OGE itself and operates as a ‘compliance’ agency — taking the information given to it by the covered government official and working with that. I have not heard of the office doing any further investigation to assess whether the information provided by the official is actually correct, unless that information is uncovered by outside forces like the media. There is a need to strengthen OGE’s authority — from clarifying its power to conduct investigations to giving it authority to conduct random audits to having it play a larger role for matters involving high-ranking executive branch officials,” she told Fox News.

Retired FBI agent Jeff Daniq, who filed the FOIA request that uncovered the worrisome omission added that not requiring such a disclosure makes no sense. “If it’s not required, then why is there a spot on the form for spouse’s income? Isn’t it particularly convenient that loopholes in the ethics law are used to eliminate reporting hundreds of thousands of donated dollars benefiting the spouse of one of the most powerful FBI executives, while at the same time those laws demand that every dime in earnings on a minor stock account be disclosed?” Daniq wondered. “That hardly seems transparent.”

All of this is made far more troublesome by the fact that McCabe was at the center of all of the FBI’s investigations into Hillary Clinton over the last few years, even though his wife was a close ally of the former Democratic Presidential candidate. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) noted in a letter to the Justice Department back in November that McCabe was promoted right about the time that the FBI began it’s investigation into Clinton but the FBI claims that McCabe did not have a “central” role in the investigation. “The FBI asserts that Mr. McCabe did not have an ‘oversight role’ in the Clinton investigation until he became the number two in command in 2016. However, the FBI’s statement does not foreclose the possibility that Mr. McCabe had a non oversight role while associate deputy director. Thus, even during the time period in which his wife’s political campaign received approximately half a million dollars from Gov. McAuliffe’s political action committee, and over $200,000 from the Virginia Democrat Party, he may have had a role in the investigation and did not recuse himself,” Grassley wrote. Still worse, Grassley also mentions that a news story detailing the possibly illegal behavior at the FBI notes that “98% of the Gov. McAuliffe related donations to his wife came after the FBI launched the investigation.”

This is an awful lot of smoke for there to be no fire. Thankfully, it seems that some in the GOP are closely monitoring this situation and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and President Trump will most certainly be interested in getting to the bottom of this if investigators find even more reason to be suspicious. The days of the Obama Department of Injustice ignoring it’s own crimes is over, there’s a new sheriff in town and if McCabe is guilty of covering for Hillary Clinton hopefully the Trump administration will bring him to justice.

Onan is the Editor-in-Chief at Romulus Marketing. He's also the managing editor at Eaglerising.com, Constitution.com and the managing partner at iPatriot.com. Onan is a graduate of Liberty University (2003) and earned his M.Ed. at Western Governors University in 2012. Onan lives in Atlanta with his wife and their three wonderful children. You can find his writing all over the web.